This podcast episode discusses the importance of personal development and mindset for success. The host shares a personal anecdote about returning from a work conference and dealing with toddlers. She also talks about overcoming a toothache and the importance of healthy grieving. The podcast then goes on to discuss the story of Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of KFC, who faced numerous setbacks and failures before achieving success in his 60s. The host emphasizes that it's never too late to pursue your dreams and shares other examples, such as Vera Wang and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who found success later in life. The podcast concludes with the message that anyone can achieve success with hard work and opportunity.
Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Jack podcast with me, your host, the podcast where we focus on holistic personal and professional success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today is a Tuesday, as you know, and I've just arrived back from a work conference, and I thought I would quickly record while the kids were having their dinner.
That did not work out. I stopped at the point, they were both at the door bearing a laptop that was playing Peppa Pig loudly, and they were shouting, Mommy, Mommy, open the door. I think the price of having been away is that if you have toddlers, they pretty much sit on top of you, or lean against you, or generally violate your personal space for a few days after your return. It just is what it is. But be that as it may, I'm deeply grateful to finally not have a toothache.
I have been laboring with the toothache for the last two weeks. The tooth itself is not entirely fixed. That will happen tomorrow, but at least the horrific pain that I have been experiencing is done. What I do every Monday is I send out a newsletter called The Maven Mail that you can subscribe to at qnso.substack.com forward slash about. In the newsletter, I often pretty much try to predict what I'm going to talk about in the podcast episode.
I thought I was going to talk about the four agreements yet again, or failing that, that I was going to talk about some of the lessons from how nice girls don't get the corner office. Instead, I saw a an Instagram post by a Dr. Glenn Patrick Doyle. And it said, ironically, when we start to get better, and when he says better here, he's referring to mental health. We also often get sad, because we start to realize how much we've missed out on how badly certain people failed us, what the younger version of us actually deserved.
Healing involves healthy grieving, no way around it. And I thought it was profound. And the thought of the profundity was immediately followed by the realization that once you have passed that healthy grieving, you get on with the thing that you have discovered. You're not meant to park there and waste the rest of your days thinking about how things could have been different. You're meant to have the realization that you're not too old, and it's not too late.
And when you have that realization, then you realize that you are free to live the life that you have just discovered that you can have the life that you wish your past self would have had, because you can't go back and rewrite the past. But you can change the narrative of what the future is. And I immediately remembered that when I blogged more regularly on my blog, throwingclay.org, I spoke about Colonel Sanders, and he's the quintessential example of this.
Colonel Sanders' name should be familiar to you, because he is the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. His full name is Colonel Harland Sanders. Colonel Harland Sanders was born in 1890 in Henryville in the US. When he was six years old, his father passed away, leaving him to cook and care for his siblings. He is in seventh grade. Now, this is a six-year-old man mind. How wild is that? In seventh grade, he dropped out of school and he left home to go work as a farmhand.
He was already turning into a tough cookie, and I can't imagine what losing a parent and needing to look after children, your fellow children, your siblings, at just the age of six would mean. At 16, he faked his age to enlist in the US Army. After being honorably discharged a year later, he got hired by the railway as a laborer. However, he got fired for fighting with a coworker. While he worked for the railway, he studied law until he ruined his legal career by getting into another fight.
I suppose now, with all this new age therapy speak that we have these days, I can't help wondering if he was not angry at his lot in life. But anyway, we have no way of knowing what the situation was. But what we know is what he actually did. And so Sanders was forced to move back in with his mother and to get a job selling life insurance. You know, when I first read the story, and I found out that he was left to cook and look and care for his siblings at six, I thought his mother was deceased, too.
But it turns out his mother was not. And when he lost his legal career, he moved back in with his mother, and he got a job selling life insurance. He got fired from that job, too, for insubordination. In 1920, he founded a ferry boat company. Later, he tried cashing in his ferry boat business to create a lamp manufacturing company, only to find out that another company had already sold a better version of the lamp. In other words, he lost his entire investment.
It wasn't until age 40 that he began selling chicken dishes in a service station, and he began to advertise his food. As he began to advertise his food, an argument with a competitor resulted in a deadly shootout. It's crazy. In a deadly shootout, four years later, he bought a motel, which burned to the ground, along with his restaurant. This determined man, because that's what you have to be to keep rebuilding in this manner, this determined man rebuilt and ran a new motel until World War II forced him to close it down.
Following the war, he tried to franchise his restaurant, and his recipe was rejected 1,009 times. 1,009 times. His recipe was accepted the 1,010th time. Sanders' secret recipe was coined Kentucky Fried Chicken and quickly became a hit. However, the booming restaurant was crippled when an interstate opened nearby, so Sanders sold it and pursued his dream of spreading KFC franchises and hiring KFC workers across the country. After all of his failures and misfortunes, Sanders finally hit it big in his 60s.
KFC expanded internationally, and he sold the company for $2 million. It would be maybe $15-16 million. I'm not that great with math, but I'm guessing in that region or more. Even today, Colonel Sanders remains central to KFC's branding. I mean, he's the face, literally the face of the branding. His goatee, his white suit, his western string tie continue to symbolize delicious country fried chicken all over the world. At age 90, Colonel Sanders passed away from pneumonia.
At that time, at the time that he passed away, there were around 6,000 KFC locations in 48 countries. By 2013, there were an estimated 18,000 KFC locations in 118 countries. So if you're overwhelmed by rejection, or you're discouraged by setbacks, remember that Colonel Harlan Sanders went through all of these things, some of his own making, and others just pure bad luck, and others just an act of God. He was fired from multiple jobs. He ruined his legal career.
He was set back by the Great Depression, by fires, by World War II, by the government building an interstate near his restaurant. And yet, as late as his 60s, he still created one of the largest fast food chains in the world and died a wealthy man. All this is to say, no matter what it is that you have been through, no matter how it is you've got to where you are today, you are not too old, and it's not too late for you to try and reach for the thing that makes life special for you.
If you've gone through some trauma, I'm sorry. You can sit on the pity pot for a little bit. You can cry for the things that could have been, but you need to stand up and move on to create the life that you wish that that person would have had, because you have the power to create it for the person that you are now. And it's not just one story. You see, the danger with telling one story is we begin to think that a person is an outlier.
Coincidentally, the book review that I circulated in the newsletter yesterday was the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. And the entire premise of the book is that the people who are considered outliers, the people who we think are extraordinary in the success that they have achieved, are in fact ordinary people from next door, who by a collection of hard work, the connection of hard work, circumstance, and luck, in a lot of ways and societal views and perceptions at the time, managed to find or to achieve some sort of success.
In other words, it's simply the fact, it's simply the preparation, or yeah, preparation and hard work meeting opportunity. So I wanted to give you a few more examples. I won't give them in the same detail that I gave Colonel Sanders, but it's the same principle. But a few more examples, just so you know that this is not an outlier story. This is a story of multiple people. And if this story can be the story of multiple people, it can be your story too.
Number two on the list is Vera Wang, a fashion designer, well known. I think she's designed every celebrity's wedding dress in the last two decades. Vera Wang started her career as an elite figure skater, competing in the 1968 US Figure Skating Championships. Afterwards, she entered the world of fashion journalism, working for Vogue and Ralph Lauren. However, it was only at age 40 that she decided to pursue her lifelong passion for fashion design. Wang opened her own bridal boutique, where she catered to clients looking for exquisite wedding gowns.
Her unique and modern bridal designs revolutionized the industry, making her a household name in the world of high end fashion, closer to her 50s than to her 30s. And if you're listening to this podcast, I would wager that you are younger than she was when she finally became well known. And when I say when she finally became well known, I'm not talking about when she started, because to start is age 40. But when the pursuit of her lifelong passion came to fruition.
There is also number three on the list, Laura Ingalls Wilder. She's the author of a book called The Little House on the Prairie. The book actually turned into a series of books called The Little House series, which chronicle her childhood experiences growing up on the American frontier. When I read those books, I actually thought it was fiction. But she began writing these beloved books of hers in her 60s. Her first book, Little House in the Bergwoods, published in 1932.
Wilder's books have since captured hearts of readers young and old, and they continue to be cherished classics. She wrote her first book in her 60s. Grandma Moses is number four on the list. She's a folk artist. Anna Mary Robinson Moses, Robertson Moses, generally known as Grandma Moses, didn't start painting until she was well into her 70s. She was born in 1860. And she worked on her family's farm and later as a housekeeper. And it wasn't until arthritis made it difficult for her to continue embroidery that she picked up a paintbrush.
Her folk art, characterized by its simple and nostalgic depictions of rural life, quickly gained recognition. In 1940, a gallery in New York featured her work, and she became an overnight sensation. I put overnight in quotes because we all know overnight success takes 20 years to build. Or more. 20 years is an arbitrary number, but the point is that overnight success is never overnight. Grandma Moses' art remains celebrated for its warmth and its depiction of American life.
Number five on the list is Ray Kroc, founder of the McDonald's Corporation. Ray Kroc, let's leave the ethics of this achievement aside. We'll focus on that on another day because life is not fair. Ray Kroc's success story began at the age of 52 when he stumbled upon a small but efficient fast food restaurant in San Bernardino, California, operated by the McDonald brothers. Recognizing the potential for a nationwide franchise, he partnered with them and eventually bought them out.
And this is where the ethics become very gray. He worked tirelessly to transform McDonald's into a global fast food giant, emphasizing consistency, cleanliness, and quality. And today McDonald's is one of the world's most recognizable brands, but more than that, probably one of the most property-rich corporations in the world. And this story started at 52 and came to fruition much later. Julia Child is a chef and cookbook author. Julia Child's culinary journey began in her late 30s when she enrolled at Lake Cordon Bleu Cooking School in Paris.
She had previously worked as a research assistant and a media copywriter. Her passion for French cuisine led her to co-author the groundbreaking cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This cookbook introduced French cuisine to American households and paved the way for her successful career as a television chef and author. Stan Lee is number seven. Those who love Marvel movies would know exactly who this is, or Marvel comics, or generally the genre of comic books and movies.
Stan Lee didn't achieve widespread success in the comic book industry until his 40s. After starting out as an assistant at Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel Comics, he co-created superheroes like Spider-Man, the X-Man, and the Fantastic Four. We all know who these people are, or I'm a huge Marvel fan, so let me speak for myself. His work revolutionized the comic book industry by introducing complex characters and real-world issues into superhero stories, and he essentially was key to giving birth to the Marvel Universe.
Samuel L. Jackson. Samuel L. Jackson is number eight, and he faced a lot of personal struggles, including drug addiction, odd jobs, and just general life struggles that come with addiction, before finding success in acting. His breakout role in Pulp Fiction was at the age of 46. He was almost 50. Jackson has since become one of Hollywood's most prolific and respected actors, and he's clean, and he's known for his powerful performances in a wide range of films.
Alan Rickman, also an actor. He initially pursued a career as a graphic designer, and later as a stage actor. It wasn't until he was in his late 20s that he decided to focus on acting professionally. His breakthrough came in his 40s, when he portrayed the complex character of Severus Snape in Harry Potter. Can you believe it? And his portrayal made him an international star and a beloved figure among Potter fans. I'm a fan. Diana Nyad, I could be mispronouncing this, is a worthy number 10 on our list.
Diana is an inspiration. Her story is one of unwavering determination. She had attempted to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage multiple times throughout her life, and she failed multiple times. At age 64, she finally accomplished her lifelong dream. In 2013, Nyad successfully completed the gruelling 110-mile swim, setting a world record and inspiring people of all ages to pursue their goals relentlessly. Her motto, Find a Way, exemplifies her indomitable spirit. These stories serve a very particular purpose.
They range from people who achieved their success in their 60s, 80s, to people who achieved their success in their 30s. All of these stories combined are meant to show you that it can happen for you too. When I tell you about Malcolm Gladwell's outliers research, I am trying to tell you and to tell myself that the people who go on to be extraordinary are ordinary to begin with. That if it can happen for them, it can happen for you.
That the people who go on to become extraordinary are not imbued with some super powers. They don't have Kryptonian powers that make them special. They are humans who worked hard, tried, tried again, and eventually met their break because they didn't give up on what they were trying to achieve. The reason I tell you this is because knowing that opens your mind to the understanding that you can do it too. It opens my mind to the understanding that I can do it too.
Once that key turns and that door is opened, your purpose will find you. You will work towards it and you will achieve it because your brain begins to believe that this is possible. You will remember in the earlier days of the podcast, I explained to you how the secret works. The secret, which is not a secret at all, is actually based on the scientific concept of the reticular activating system. It comes from understanding that what your unconscious brain believes, your unconscious brain has the power to create in the world and in your forebrain.
What it means really is it opens your eyes to opportunities that you would otherwise not see simply because you don't believe that they exist. So the people who finally achieved their dreams at 64, the people who achieved them in their 40s, the people who achieved them in their 50s and 60s, the people who have left lasting legacies that they started building in their 70s, are people who are there to say to you by the telling of their stories that this could be your story too.
That if you've been through trauma and if you've been through something difficult, that does not have to be the ending of your story. You can choose for it to be the ending of your story. You can choose to become bitter. You can choose to park on the pity pot and build a mansion there and live there forever. It is within your rights to do so. But you simply need to remember or to understand that it is an option not to.
That you can go through all these difficult things and you can still choose as of now, as of tomorrow, as of any moment that you decided that the rest of your life is going to be beautiful and that you're going to do whatever it takes to make it so. And so whatever the dream that has been placed in your heart is, whether that dream has anything to do with a nine to five with your children or generally with the pursuit of your greater purpose or even just with the simplicity of day-to-day happiness, simplicity of day-to-day happiness, if there is anything more complex than day-to-day happiness.
But you understand what I mean? Even if that is what your dream is, because remember success is as defined by Maya Angelou, liking what you do and liking how you do it. That's all it is. It's liking what your life looks like. To me, it's waking up and feeling grateful that this is your life. No matter what it looks like, it's the ability to breathe in and to breathe out and not to feel that tight band around your chest caused by stress.
That is what success is. And when you understand that people can go and fetch their success, whether it's in painting, it's in swimming or it's in acting or it's in cooking, you can understand that you can go and do it too. The power lies with you. You are not too old and it is not too late. Find your success. Find your happiness. Work for it. Pursue it. When opportunity comes knocking and it will, let it find you ready.
Let it find you ready and with an open mind, ready and understanding, ready and with the full understanding that your time is coming and it is worth hustling for it and hustling towards it and hustling to stay in the game so that when it comes, you're warm, ready to hit the ground. I hope that this has been helpful to you. And I hope that this message comes for you at a timely time. And I know one of my followers DMed me that they're starting a new life in the UK and it's a big decision to uproot a family, a husband, to go and do this for her.
And all I heard in that story was that it's never too late and you're never too old. She's been out of the market, the job market for many years, and she's just got her first job. And I don't know what life holds for her in the future, but I know that by making this decision and doing this, and she struggled with making this decision, she has steered her life in the direction of the dream that she wants.
When we started having this conversation and she didn't know which way to go, I asked her, when you imagine your funeral, maybe in your 80s, maybe in your 90s, whenever, maybe you live to be 200, doesn't matter. When you imagine your funeral, watching your funeral from heaven or somewhere, what is the eulogy you would want to hear? What is it you want them to say defined you? What is it that you want them to say that you did or didn't do or you achieved? And then ask yourself if this decision you're struggling with takes you in the direction of that.
And that makes the yes or the no or the I'm going to keep going a lot easier. Have a beautiful week and take a step towards your dream. If you like the podcast, like, please subscribe, share, DM me, comment, whatever your heart fancies. I appreciate it. I screenshot every compliment I receive. And for the second time, I wish you a beautiful week. And I cannot wait to collapse into my bed and sleep in it for the first time in a few days.
